Stranger Times
by Ember Nickel
Summary: El made it almost two weeks through the third timeline before the demodogs showed up. [Past Imperfect, Future Unknown 2020 gift for Etnoe.]


El made it almost two weeks through the third timeline before the demodogs showed up. She'd liked that Hawkins; there hadn't been any laboratories, and Hopper-Dad-called her Jane and acted like she'd always been there. But then one day when she and Max were at the arcade, Max acting like it was totally normal for El to beat her at video games, she'd seen the bloody streaks emerge from across the street, and _shifted_.

It was the only thing she could still do. Her nose bled and her head hurt, but she was alive, and there weren't any monsters following her. That was as much as she could hope for.

Except the arcade was empty. Not only were there no demodogs, but there was also no Max, and nobody else. For a few moments she figured she'd slipped into the Upside Down by mistake, but the Upside Down was different. The colors were wrong, and it was...colder, not necessarily on a thermometer, but everywhere. This was another timeline, just a timeline where the video games might as well have grown out of the ground like trees.

There was no one at the grocery store, or at Hopper's, or at the Wheelers'. At least there was a bike in Lucas' driveway, which was a little too small for her, it must have been Erica's-if it still made sense to talk about Erica in a world where nobody else seemed to be alive.

Maybe she should shift again. But she was tired, and there was no guarantee that the demodogs wouldn't find her even more quickly that time. Were they drawn to her power? It didn't make sense, but nothing had made sense for a long time.

She biked to the Byers', tried the door. No luck. She focused, willing it to break down. If she didn't find someone soon she'd have to shift again, like it or not, to get something to eat. There would be no gifts of Eggos left in the forests, not there.

But strain as she would, the door remained locked. El trooped around to the back door, if only because it stopped her from having to think of another destination.

That door didn't move either. But something did.

"Who are you? Don't leave!"

She turned around warily to see a familiar face, attached to arms that gripped a baseball bat threateningly. "Jonathan?" she gaped.

Slowly lowering the bat, Jonathan paced forward. "Who are you?" he repeated.

"It's me! El! Uh, Jane, whatever."

"Do I know you?" He shrugged. "I don't know anything anymore."

"Of course you-" She broke off. He must be like her, on the run from the creatures of the Upside Down and stranded outside his own world. But he couldn't shift, could he? "How did you get here?"

"I don't know," he said. "I was running away, and I fell down, and I thought the-the spider thing was gonna get me. It..." He broke off.

"You don't have to talk about it," said El. "Um, how long have you been here?"

"Five days, I think."

She shouldn't have smiled, but she couldn't help it. "So you know where to get food?"

* * *

Jonathan's bat turned out to be pretty good for breaking windows and stealing as much food as you needed. "It can't keep going like this forever," he said. "I mean, nobody's paying the bills, right? The electricity will turn off?"

"Just don't split up," said El. "If we need to shift again, maybe if we're holding hands or something, you can come with me."

"I'm not sure how I did it the first time," he pointed out. "I don't know if it will work again."

She hadn't bothered trying to explain everything. They were both happy enough not being alone that she didn't feel the need to talk about the lab, about the Mind Flayer, about her powers. Jonathan knew her as one of Will's friends, and that was enough.

But despite the ability to break into buildings, the hard way, they preferred to stay in Castle Byers, which somehow still existed. Will's art, depicting the adventures of their Dungeons and Dragons party, still hung on the walls. It felt like it could be a magical place, a place where it was just the two of them having adventures and staying up late. Besides, if the monsters came for them, locks and doors wouldn't help.

They listened to music, of course, Jonathan attempting to give her a crash course in all the cultural references she'd missed out on. "I didn't really do a lot of normal kid things, before I met Will," she said carefully. "My mom was, uh, really sick."

She liked the instrumentals-dazzling guitar solos, richly patterned drums, frenetic synthesizers. Then there was a _vrm, vrm_ that she didn't recognize. "What's that?"

"What's what?" Jonathan echoed.

"That noise."

He paused, gaped, glimpsed over at his bat as if determining whether or not it would do any good. "That's a _car_."

They looked at each other, and then sprinted out of the castle and across the yard. None of the things they were running from were human enough to drive. Well, there were people El was running from, too. But she almost wanted to see Dr. Brenner again, just to know that there were people alive. That she and Jonathan weren't the only two runaways from time.

It was a car, a car that had overshot the Byers' house and was continuing down the road. They sprinted after it, waving their arms and yelling. Maybe she should have grabbed the bat, just to increase her armspan.

The car stopped, right in the middle of the street, and a woman got out.

"You're real," she said. "This is Hawkins?"

"Something like it," said Jonathan. "I'm Jonathan, this is El."

"I'm Sara," she said, walking over. "It's, uh, extremely nice to meet you, to meet anyone. Are your parents here?"

"Nobody's here," said El sharply, "except you, I guess."

"I'm sorry! I meant-it's terrible that you have to fend for yourselves."

"Better by myself than surrounded by demodogs," El pointed out.

Sara blinked. "What?"

"The monsters," Jonathan said. "Big creepy spider things? Weird bloody...bitey things? Cold things that sort of take you over? You haven't seen any of those?"

Sara looked horrified. "No! I haven't seen anyone since I came here."

"How did you get here? Were you just running away from something?"

"Not really. I mean, after my father...died, I was going through his things, and I found he had a lot of weird papers. Maps, old newspapers, blueprints for a half-finished machine in his garage. It surprised me, because he'd never been really a crafty guy, so I kept working on it, and it took me...here."

"Where is it?" El asked. "Can we take it back?"

Sara shook her head. "It wasn't here, in this world, after I used it. I should have brought the blueprints."

"Maybe not," said Jonathan. "At least there's nothing trying to kill us here."

El raised her eyebrows. "That we know of."

Laughing, Sara extended a hand. "I can't promise that I have any answers. But I give you my word, I definitely don't want to kill you."

"Good enough for me," said Jonathan, shaking it.

El did so too, at a questioning glance from Sara. But as the woman pulled away, she squinted at El's hand. Nervously, El looked down at her sleeve; it was still hiding the digits she kept secret even from Jonathan.

"Just looking at your bracelet," Sara said. "It's pretty."

"Thanks," said El, toying with it, snapping it against her wrist. "My dad gave it to me."

"C'mon back," Jonathan waved. "I'll show you our castle."

"A castle?" Sara echoed. "Now this I've got to see."

"It's not a real castle," El explained. "Just a headquarters."

"I still like the sounds of that."

El focused on the Byers house, wondering if the rest of her powers had come back. Nothing changed.

And yet, even though she felt like she could shift if they needed to, she also felt like the world had become safer, more stable somehow, in the few minutes since Sara had arrived. Adults weren't always very useful, but maybe this one could help her solve some of the many mysteries of the many Hawkins.


End file.
